The Magnolia gazette. [volume] (Magnolia, Miss.) 1872-current, 1887-12-10
SHOULD THE CONSTITUTION BE
BLAMED?
Those Who Forsake Their Own Shall
Themselves be Eorsaken.

course of the Atlanta Constitution
in the recent great struggle for
Prohibition may seem very dis
picahle and blamewcrthy indeed.
The TACT that with gigantic
flop 1t straddled the fence, in al
thoughtful and scientific way,
using the campaign in which the
mass of the whites were arrayed
against the mass of the blacks,
SIMPLY as a money making scheme,
stufing one side of the paper with
whisky articles and the othel with
Prohibition articles at SO much
per word, might look to stranger
as the infamy of men recreant to
their race, recreant to decency
and recreant to all the better inn
pulses of mankind.
But the editors of that paper
are not the ones to blame for it
the men who are responsible for
it are the Prohibitionists of Geor-
gia. sSuppose that paper had
favored Prohibition in that con
test-every man who sympathized
with the liquor traffic would have
turned upon it and used his infu-
ence aga,n.t it with unrelenting
determination-they would have
opposed with united strength
every political aspiration Of its
editors, and every enterprise Of
the paper.
And what would the Prohibi-
tionists have done? The major
ity would not have lifted a finger
to help the papcr-would not have
made an effort to eounteract the
injury done the paper OF the edi-
tors by the other side, and the
editors of that paper knew this
fact well.
Had it been otherwise; had the
disposition Of the Prohibitionists
been different, had they clung to-
gether as the whisky men do, the
Constitutiou-published at the
capital Of State, whose white
people favor Prohibition ten to
one, while its subscribers are four
ffths bitterly opposed to the
liquor trafiic--it would have been
compelled to favor Prohibition
and with the Constitution a1rayee
against the. liquor traffic, chat traf-
fic with all its reelng black sup
porters would, by a large majority
have been swept away from At
lanta like chaff.
Were the liquor men in tn
same majority in Georgia that th,
Prohibltionists are, the Constitu
tion would be off the fence and ol
their side before the bursting o
another dawn. Because the liqeo
men, supporting a bad caus
though they are, stand by thos
| who stand by them in political an
private life, and they fight thos
who fight them, and make thei
friendship of some value and thei
eninity of some injury.
1t is a melancholy contempla
ton indeed. that, speaking not 9
exceptions, but of the great IN;
jority, the friendship of one |
quor man is worth more either t
a candidate or to a business MAJ
than the friendship of ten bette
men who are Prohibitionists.
These reflections are not force
upon the writer alone by the A
lanta campaign, but by glarln
facts in Mississippi, which be;
strongly and portentouslY upo
the Prohibition contest next ye;
in Kinds and other most impo
tant counties in Mississippi.
! The man who did harder labC
than any save one, to carry Hlnt
county for Prohibition last yea
, and without whom the count
| would have gone wet, SAID to Il
writer the other day. sThe count
= may vote on Prohibition as ofte
, as it pleascs hereafter, but T.
never again lift a finger in such
contest. We carried the count
and yet the Prohibitionists let ii
men who saved the county
slaughtered in every way by IL
boycott in politics and in bus
ness.
, They allowed enc who thong
: an officer, dared to take star
and side with the white men al
{ moraiIty--they let HIM beslauell
) cred at the polls for no Grin
j savethat he had the manhood
fight the liquor traffic, and Il
evils growing. out Of it--ths
] slaughtered him and let the gan
: blers and hoodlums and kecpe
i Of dives crow over him. The
: let the newspaper man and Il
business man who had stood wi